


Observations from 221A

by azriona



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Behind the Scenes, Diary/Journal, Gen, mass observation project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:53:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azriona/pseuds/azriona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Female, age 67, Widowed, London, retired seamstress and landlady. It's not what she sees, it's what she observes that counts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Observations from 221A

**Author's Note:**

> Beta & Brit-Picked by Earlgreytea68 and Wendymr. The [Mass Observation Project](http://www.massobs.org.uk/index.htm) is a real thing, based at the University of Sussex. The questions that Mrs. Hudson answers are actual questions from recent directives, though I've played with when exactly they were asked. There are lots of books based on submissions to the project; it's an absolute gold mine of social history. This was written for the Sherlockbbc LJ community CommFest, and I’m just now allowed to post under my own name. Many thanks to the still unknown Recipient, who gave me a chance to play with the format!

It was a dark and stormy night…

Well, that’s not entirely true. It was a bright and sunny day when the student volunteers at the Mass Observation Project archives made their discovery, but in light of what they found, “dark and stormy night” is more appropriate, even if it’s not entirely accurate (to either the story or what they located, I suppose). 

The Mass Observation Project, based at the University of Sussex for the last century, has produced the finest and largest collection of social history, as told by those who lived it. While recent records are in very good condition, and very well organized, it is the older notes that are in disarray, braved only by a score of volunteers with hardy constitutions, who go through the misfiled, misplaced, and often simply missing boxes in an attempt to restore order. 

Deep in a box incongruously marked "Bees", a hardy volunteer located a file of M.O. responses written by one Mrs. Martha Hudson of 221A Baker Street, London. You may ask Mrs. Hudson's importance - great, I assure you, in that the residents of 221B were none other than the still famous duo of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. 

Mass Observation participants, of course, were not allowed to include their names with their responses, nor were they to include any identifying information of others featuring in their tales. In this way, confidentiality was assured. However, it became quite obvious to those of us reading Mrs. Hudson's responses for the first time in fifty years that there was something unique about her upstairs tenants, and after some searching, we were able to cross-reference her M.O. identification number with her original application. There is no doubt that the woman writing these pages was the Mrs. Hudson of Baker Street fame, and that "dear detective S" and "good doctor J" were Holmes and Watson, respectively. 

Without further ado, I leave you to read those of Mrs. Hudson's observations which pertain to the famous duo. We are only sorry that the box mismarked "Bees" contained only two years' worth of responses from Mrs. Hudson, and we intend to continue combing the back catalogue of the warehouse in the hope of finding additional treasures. 

James Morstan University of Sussex, November 2072

*

_December 2009_  
Female, age 67, Widowed, London, retired seamstress and potential landlady. You want to know where we think we'll be in a year, in November 2010. I know exactly where I will be; I will be at home, with my feet propped up, reading a book and having a nice cup of tea and enjoying the quiet in my house. If I am very lucky, I will have rented out the upstairs flat to a nice person or persons who won't go in and out at all hours of the night, won't cause undue amounts of damage, and be perfectly pleasant tenants. Failing that, perhaps I could go on holiday to Majorca, if it’s not too dear. Mrs. T might be willing to go with me, but would I be willing to go with her? 

_January 2010_  
Female, age 67, Widowed, London, retired seamstress and potential landlady. I've left the last question of this Winter Directive rather late, but it's quite a tricky one to answer, and I wrote so much about the book club that my hand was sore when I finished. You want to know about menopause and I don't know how to answer, because of course menopause for me was rather a long time ago, and I have put it right out of my head. Dismal business, really, mostly I spent a great deal of it sitting in front of the fridge, waving myself with a packet of biscuits, while Harvey (good riddance) complained about the electric bill. 

"It's my money you're burning up, sitting there," Harvey (good riddance) would shout, but I ignored him and kept on waving cool air at my neck. Harvey (good riddance) is burning himself now, and if he's on my mind it's only because dear detective S has finally agreed to rent the upstairs flat. Quite a relief; I could do with the extra funds, since the aforementioned book club has decided to read the entire back catalogue of Palliser novels (I don't know what Mrs. T next door is thinking, she'll want us to go in fancy dress next). And of course I do owe dear detective S a good turn, poor lad, he's far too thin. Even with that heavy coat of his I think he might blow into the Thames given a good gust on the right day. 

(I suppose I shouldn't call Harvey (good riddance) by name, you do ask us to not use proper names, but he's dead so I don't suppose it matters.) 

Now, a mid-life transition - that's quite different from menopause, isn't it? I never thought of transition as linked to any sort of biology, because transition happens too frequently. Take S, for instance - he's in a spot of transition now, moving out of that rather awful flat on Montague Street, with the rats and the roaches and I honestly think someone might have died in the back alley, what with the smell! Goodness. I couldn't believe my ears when he said he was still living there. That's where he'd been during the mess with Harvey (good riddance) and that was seven years ago. I assume the rats were still there; I wouldn't step foot in the place, but I remember the one I saw when I hired him originally. S assures me the rats have long since departed for better accommodation, but I told him that I allowed no animal to cross my door, and I shan't, either. 

Such a better situation here, though he'll need a flatmate. I can't lower the rent too much, even for S, but he doesn't seem to mind. I think he could do with the company, lonely man, his eyes lit up when he realized he'd need someone else, right before he pursed his lips and wondered who he'd find. I think he might have been lonely in Montague Street. Learning to live with another body underfoot is quite a transition. Goodness, learning to live with tenants, that's a transition for me as well; I haven't had anyone in those rooms in a year, I'd quite got used to the quiet. I dare say I won't have reason to miss it, S does seem a quiet, sensible sort. 

*

_March 2010_  
Female, age 67, Widowed, London, retired seamstress and landlady. You see, I did rent the upper rooms - and dear detective S seems to be so much happier here than he ever was in Montague Street. His flatmate, the good doctor J, is a pleasant fellow, so affable and friendly. He swept the doorstep for snow after that odd storms last month, brings me my post and is quite dependable about going to the shops for the odd pint of milk when I've run low. It very nearly makes up for S, who is quite the most awful tenant, firing guns and slamming doors and playing violin at all hours. 

"Honestly, S, that caterwauling, I'm surprised J can sleep through it," I had to scold him the other night – you wanted to know what we did during the course of a day. My day began with S’s violin, gone three in the morning, and I could hear the ridiculous notes through the floorboards clear as if he were in the next room. 

"His room is upstairs, Mrs. H," said S. I hadn't meant to glance at S's room, of course, but the door was wide open, and I can't be blamed for looking through an empty door, now can I? It wasn't as if I was hoping to see J asleep in the bed there, naked as the day he was born. I assume he’d at least be covered with a blanket. 

"All the same. If you're going to play something, could it at least be something soothing?" 

He did, bless him, I don’t know what it was, but it lulled me right to sleep like a baby, and I didn’t wake until it was gone eight, and the good doctor J was on his way out the door. He closes it so quietly I don’t hear him, usually, but he rather slammed it that morning which was enough unlike him that I had to go right back upstairs to see what S had done. 

“Nothing, Mrs. H,” said S, but I could tell. He was curled up on his sofa, facing away from me, the bottoms of his bare feet sticking out under his dressing gown. Sulking for all the world like a stroppy teenager. 

“Did you get any sleep last night, S?” Honestly, two grown men, you’d think at least one of them would think to pick up after themselves in the kitchen; J is quite mannerly and tries to keep up, but judging from the pile of washing up in the sink, it’s been three days since he even glanced at a sponge. 

“I don’t sleep.” 

I let him sulk a little while longer. You can’t wash dishes three days gone without at least letting them soak a little first. 

“He wants a _job_ ,” said S finally, just as I was putting the last plate to dry. 

“Of course he does,” I said, soothingly. “We all want to feel useful.” 

“What does he need a _job_ for, we’re already busy with murders,” sulked S. “A job would only get in the way.” 

“He’s not like you, S, he needs something a bit more substantial. Pick up your socks and I’ll make you some lunch.” 

“I’m not hungry,” said S, but he picked up his socks anyway and I made a nice chicken soup and he ate half, so you see that he can’t always be believed. I think he fell asleep for ten minutes on my sofa afterward, and by the time J came back from the shops, quite disgruntled and without the actual shopping, S was feeling much better. 

I heard them both trundle down the stairs together sometime later, S quite cheerful and J doggedly behind him, so I suppose they kissed and made up. Perhaps not kissed; J is quite adamant on that point and the good doctor gets so flustered that I’ve left off teasing. Mrs. T’s pair are talking about adoption, she’s so looking forward to a little one in the house. I wonder how expensive it would be to install baby gates on the stairs? 

_July 2010_  
Female, age 68, Widowed, London, retired seamstress and landlady. You want to know our thoughts on elder care and growing older in today’s society. I suppose I would be a good person to ask except that I don’t feel old. Well, I do have a hip but it’s really only a bother when it rains or when I have to go up and down the stairs to tell S and J they have another client at the door. I suppose they think I’m their housekeeper, always expecting me to answer the door for them, and what with the wet weather we’ve been having my hip is being much more hippy than usual. 

J says there’s an injection he could give me to ease the discomfort but I think it’s part of growing older, isn’t it? To have pains and aches and at least they remind me I’m still alive. 

But it is nice to know that S and J are upstairs. I think J is a very good influence on S; he held the door for me the other day when I came home with the shopping. He didn’t offer to bring it in, of course, but he did hold the door, and I’ve seen him slam it on his brother scores of times. I would blame him but I rather think M deserves it. 

So handy, having a doctor in the house. I wouldn’t dream of bothering J, of course, but he gave me a right scolding the other day when he spotted the burn on my hand. I’d been silly and tried to pull out the tray of scones with only a wet towel, and my hand was bright pink. 

“You should have said something, Mrs. H,” he said, his brow furrowed and his tone just a bit cross. 

“Don’t be silly, I can’t be bothering you for every little thing.” 

“You’re not a bother, Mrs. H,” said J. “Don’t you go thinking that you ever would be.” 

He gave me some ointment and bandaged my hand up properly and has picked up my shopping every day for a week. When my hand’s better, I’ll make him the lemon biscuits he likes best. S will be quite jealous, but S shot holes in my wall and could stand to observe a little positive reinforcement. I’m very sure that J would agree but he’ll still share the biscuits with S when my back is turned. 

_January 2011_ Female, age 68, Widowed, London, retired seamstress and landlady. You ask about our thoughts on crime and investigation. It’s really none of my business, even if dear detective S does live upstairs, and the good doctor J blogs about it. And I might comment on J’s blog but I don’t quite understand how either of them can stand to chase about after criminals time and time again. And half the time they show up here! Well. Catch me letting someone just waltz into my home and take things that don’t belong to them. And an American to boot – the nerve, quite as though he owned the world and everything in it. 

I won’t admit it to S. When J brought me back downstairs to my own kitchen, I nearly cried. There was a moment when I thought – well, I didn’t think I’d see it again. Just a moment, and sitting at my own table, with my own mugs filled with tea, and J’s gentle hands cleaning the cut on my cheek ….

I’m sorry. I had to stop writing. I’m better now. 

It was frightening. That’s what I can’t tell S. He didn’t sound the least bit surprised that I had the phone the whole time. If he knew I was so frightened that I couldn’t put the sugar in my tea, that J had to do it for me – I couldn’t bear to disappoint him. 

My bins have quite a dent in them now. 

I shan't say any more about it, only that I'm very glad that S and J are upstairs watching over everything. I sleep much safer in my bed at night, knowing they're there. Even with Americans at the door. 

_February 2011_  
Female, age 68, Widowed, London, retired seamstress and landlady. I have time for another question from the Winter Directive, so I think I’ll answer your question about donor conception. Such a funny world we live in. When I was young, you had children or you didn’t have children, and if a couple didn’t have children, you didn’t really ask questions about it because it was all tied up in something much more mysterious that made the adults uncomfortable. 

And of course it’s a fine thing that people who can’t have children are able to have them now. Mrs. T’s married ones next door, they’re quite desperate for one, and certainly they don’t have the proper equipment themselves so they’re looking into their options. They’ve found a nice girl out of Yorkshire, she’s apparently quite keen to help out, but of course it’s all a very private matter, hush hush, nothing settled yet. Mrs. T explained this all over tea and biscuits last week. I think she’s already knitting booties. 

I never wanted children – certainly not with Harvey (good riddance). Can you imagine? They might have turned out like him, flutterbudgets who go off and never phone or write. No worse than I am now, I suppose, except they’d take a bit of my heart with them, and at least my heart’s whole and firmly under my own roof. 

Besides, it’s hardly as if I’m alone, not with S and J downstairs as often as they’re upstairs, fixing the hinges on the door, carrying the rubbish and nailing down the loose floorboard in the hall. Not a day goes by that one or the other doesn’t stop to pass the time of day – in fact, J came knocking on my door, quite upset, just yesterday, sometime after nine when I was having my herbal soother. 

“Mrs. H,” he said, all worry and bluster, “are you all right?” 

“Of course, don’t be silly.” 

“Only I didn’t see you this morning when I left for the clinic, and S hadn’t seen you all day, and it’s been quiet and I thought—“

“Thought I’d gone and died on you?” I filled in. Eyes round as saucers, perhaps old people shouldn’t mention to young people that we know we’re going to die someday? “No, dear, I’m fine, no worries about me.” 

Such a dear heart, that young man of S’s. Oh, it’s thin walls, I know J would protest loudly and S would press his lips together and dart his eyes and say nothing in that way he has, but they belong together as sure as strawberries and cream. They both know it too, even if they’ll never say it. 

Married ones would be nice. Having a little one keeps you young, but Mrs. T can keep hers, I think. They’re a nice enough couple, always up for a pleasant chat when we see each other on the pavement, and they’ll make fine parents, but they’re not like my S and J, are they now? Family’s all we have in the end, I always say, and perhaps blood is thicker than water, but there’s plenty thicker than blood, after all. Love’s got nothing to do with blood, not where it really counts. 

_September 2011_  
Female, age 69, Widowed, London, retired seamstress ~~and landlady~~. I am late responding to the Spring Directive but it has…been a hard time here. 

You ask about funerals, our feelings about them, the ones we’ve attended. 

The last funeral I attended was a few months ago. He was too young, but we always say that about the ones who are younger than we are. It was a closed-coffin – M’s insistence – and perhaps that was better, but I would have liked the chance to look him in the face and be angry at something other than a box. 

He made me so angry. Holes in my wall, and the violin in the middle of the night, and the look on J’s face when he came home that night. 

That was the only time I felt for M, when he came to tell me especially. I wanted to hit him, when he came in and told me that S was dead. I’ve never wanted to hit anyone in my life, even the American when he fell on my bins. M was so calm about it, as if he was telling me the weather, and I wanted to hit him for being so callous about his brother. And then he put down his cup of tea, and the cup rattled against the saucer. 

That was something else S did to make me angry, because M’s cup never rattles on his saucer. 

When J came home from the hospital, we sat on the bottom of the steps leading up to their flat and cried. I hadn’t cried until then, when I saw J come in alone. I’ve seen J come home alone thousands of times but he always came home to, and not left him behind. He couldn’t go upstairs. He slept on my sofa, under an afghan I’ve had so long it’s faded from purple to pink. I went up for his suit later while he showered. He used up all the hot water. I didn’t mind. I knew why he needed it. 

The funeral service was nice enough, I suppose. Small, subdued I think you’d call it, considering the circumstances, very private, and yet there were people coming out of the woodwork, everyone dour and grieving in silence at first. And then…like a bomb went off, but suddenly people were telling each other what S had said to them when he first met them, and what he’d deduced, and the impossible things he’d done and said and discovered and announced to the world. And then people were laughing, and crying, and exchanging numbers, and it was like the best party where you met all the cousins you’d heard about but never met, because nearly everyone had read J’s blog, or been clients of S, and somehow they all knew me, and wanted to hold my hand and remember him with me, and I remembered some of their names and faces, but not really, but no one seemed to mind. 

And in the middle of all, sat J, quite alone on his chair. I was able to slip away for a moment, and sat next to him. We held hands, just one moment, and let everyone circle around us, lost in their own joyous grieving, if you can call it that. J held my hand so tightly, and didn’t open his eyes. I don’t remember what pulled me away. I hope I comforted him. He comforted me. 

It’s so quiet here now. When I return with the shopping, I can hear the tick of the clock, and the upstairs flat is covered in dust. I suppose it was quiet before they moved here. Perhaps I even liked it. I don’t anymore. 

J has moved away. He can’t live upstairs without him. It’s still exactly the same – M has paid the rent for the rest of the year, which is something of a relief because I don’t want to sift through S’s things, not just yet. 

Mrs T has been hinting that her married pair want a bigger place with their new little one, and wouldn’t it be fine if they could move just next door, so she could still see the little darling every day. It would be nice, I think, to have a child in the house, but I wake up at 3am sometimes, and think I hear a violin, and the house isn’t so lonely then. I couldn’t hear the violin, not with a baby crying. So I think I’ll leave the flat upstairs be. Just for a little, just until I don’t need to hear his ghost for company. 


End file.
